Eat 30% Fewer Calories, Live 30% Longer

Nutrition
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I follow a radio program called Science Fantastic with Professor Michio Kaku. He is a theoretical physicist at the NY City College. But on his show he talks about recent discoveries in science.

I was fascinated to find out that according to a study done on dieting, if you eat 30 percent fewer calories, you live roughly 30 percent longer. In theory, as it applies to humans. These tests have been done on mice and monkeys. More evidence that suggests it is better to eat to live than live to eat.

These kind of tests can not be studied on humans because humans are wimps and don’t like to be restricted. Tests on animals are much easier to have control and comparison.

Does this evidence make you want to ear more low calorie, unprocessed foods?

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No, I can’t say that it does. If I manage to get to an age where the amount of calories I have consumed in my life is the deciding factor in my demise, I would find that very embarrassing.

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Yes, I’ve put everything on hold to plan on reducing my calories by 100% and outliving all you suckers.

You watched Planet of the Apes last night, didnt you?

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Good luck with that

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30 percent less than people who eat what they want? Sounds like self control vs fat people. Makes sense.

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I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t eat 6 or 7 mashed potato and gravy sammiches on those cute little Hawaiian buns that they only sell around Thanksgiving.

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What is the quality of life though? The monkeys that ate less look like they are about ready to7 die.

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Nope.

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That’s exactly what I was thinking.

I heard that there have been studies showing lesser incidence of certain diseases like cancer in people who consumed less calories on average, but then you have to consider that those people will probably age skinny and weak and face a totally different host of drawbacks that come with having been inactive earlier in life and having less muscle mass, lower bone density, and so on.

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If you are interested in longevity, Peter Attia is a good read/listen. He focuses on prolonging the “health window”, as well as raising the absolute age of survival.

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I hate appetite problems, so I wouldn’t mind this.

But I also wouldn’t see myself making much progress or recovery off this kinda low calorie ISH

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Does eating less mean less activity?

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Except that it absolutely has been studied in humans. Many, many times. A quick trip through PubMed will reveal that.

For the majority of people on this site, reducing calories by 30% would require a reduction in activity in order to minimize muscle loss, yes.

So “eat less, live longer” is one of those “looks good on paper for some people under some conditions”-things. Definitely doesn’t take quality of life and overall lifestyle into account and very definitely doesn’t apply to people who lift weights to build size and strength.

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Surely not, but smaller calorie intakes, I believe, don’t correlate positively with muscle mass.

The kind of “eating less” required to get the supposed health benefits would most likely impede significant gains in muscle mass IMO.

Reality check: assuming maintenance level to be roughly 2,500 kcal a day… A decrease of 30% would mean eating 1,750 kcal a day for the rest of your life. Do you know anyone who is active AND actually has lots of muscle who eats that little?

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Define what qualifies as active?

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You seem to be cherry-picking parts of my post to reply to… Just pretend I didn’t use the word active and that I only mentioned muscle mass and the other benefits of lifting weights.

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I think as it applies to humans, consuming fewer empty calories may cause you to live longer. Choosing water over mountain dew. Celery over potato chips. I’m not sure the function of this kind of calorie restriction is practical in humans.

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This is a silly thing.

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I never understood why people would refer as “empty calories” to “calories from foods that don’t have micronutrients,” like man, micros don’t have anything to do with freaking calories.

And what do you call the ones coming from nutritious foods? Filled calories?

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With my metabolism and TDEE, I will look like a skinny fucker again if I do that. Gotta feed the muscle baby.

I agree that if you consume too much food. Your sodium, sugar and saturated fat intake will be high too. There is a research that shows that Japanese sumo live 10 years shorter than average Japanese persons because of their absurdly high caloric intake because they do have to be big like up to 400 pounds to be able to win competition. You can’t eat clean to be that big. It was their decision and they knew the risks.

But for normal athletes and people who lift this doesn’t apply. I feel like this just applies to overweight people who have walking to their cars as the most strenuous exercise they have ever done in 10 years. What a generalization by Michio Kaku, but he isn’t wrong about it either, since a large proportion of American population are overweight and don’t exercise.